Grandma Roxie

                    The child is father of the man;
                    And I could wish my days to be
                     Bound each to each by natural piety.

                                            --Wordsworth

  My maiden name was Roxie Amanda Stidham, and though when I was a baby I’ve heard they called me Nanny, all my growed life I been Roxie. I usually say I’m from Hazel Green Kentucky, cause that’s such a pretty name and that’s the railroad station we left from to come to Oklahoma, but in fact I was borned in Neola nearby. There’s nothin left of Neola today except the smell of the hills and the trees, a smell that lingers in my blood. Hazel Green is in Wolfe County in the mountains of eastern Kentucky right above Breathitt county that folks always knowed as Bloody Breathitt because of all the feudin and killin that went on there.

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